Category: Audio Communication

Glue traps are a cruel and horrible way to kill mice. The removal of the dead mouse is an additional health risk. Here, some irresponsible person simply tossed the trap to the curb, creating a hazard for children, wildlife and outdoor cats.

Cats can catch influenza. I’m not aware that felines are a significant factor in the spread of the disease or as a vehicle for recombination — a “mixing vessel” like pigs. Compared to migrating birds and the worldwide poultry industry, flu in cats seems to be more of a curiosity than a concern. If there is research that shows otherwise, I’d very much like to know about it.

Because of Toxoplasma gondii, there continues to be a witch hunt against cats. No matter that with anything resembling sanitation there basically is no risk. No matter that most human infection with the parasite is due to the consumption of under-cooked meat and/or contaminated and unwashed raw vegetables. It would be a tragedy if that instead of seeing cats as the first line of defense against rodent disease — a war that’s raged since the Pharaohs — people began to imagine a feline enemy within.

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Dr. Calisher’s reply:

. . .

Anyway, the “Cats have their own viruses” statement looks like something I probably said but it seems out of place, maybe misleading, in the article.

In case you are interested, I had a cat once. It was our neighbors’. They weren’t crazy about it but they treated it very well. The cat, however, loved our dog and would spend the days I our house with the dog while we were gone; it entered using a doggie door, not meant to be a cattie door. I’m not particularly enamored of cats, although I liked this one and he liked me. He’d bring me dead birds and live mice in the middle of the night, drop them on my belly and then sit on my pillow, look down at me, and purr loud enough to wake up my wife and I.

Nonetheless, cats have been known known to be infected with viruses, parasites, bacteria, fungi and other infectious agents: feline immunodeficiency virus, feline leukemia virus, heartworm, the plague bacillus in their fleas, rabies virus, the fungus that causes “ringworm”, toxoplasmosis, influenzaviruses, and various worms. Cats are probably no more dangerous as disease carriers than any other mammal – but they can be dangerous. Not very dangerous (except for rabies and plague) but they can be carriers of Bartonella henselae bacteria, the cause of cat scratch disease.